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This entry was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2011 at 9:57 am and is filed under New Zealand.
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Maori, Asian, Pasifika then European, but its worth noting that, for bachelor’s degrees (what most people think of when you say tertiary), the descending order is Asian, European, Maori, then Pasifika.

Easy fix just expand the number of Bullshit degrees that can be awarded – my goodness we are well down the well trodden path already.

Trouble is in the real world no body needs fricken gender studies graduates so they all end up as policy analysists in the Public Service and ‘twould be the same for the expanded degree base.

Still it would could help lower the unemployment stats by hiding the more well heeled beneficiaries in the Public Service writing important policy documents that nobody ever reads. And that would be probably just as well too because heaven help us when they do get taken seriously this country gets even more screwed up.

I heard Nga Tahu are putting a huge emphasis on Tertiary education & the sciences, good on them I reckon, maybe Hone should open his eyes to how other tribes are planning to be successful as we get further into the 21st century & it’s not his handout mentality.

Getting more students into tertiary education is only a fraction of the equation. It’s the number that graduate, and the quality & relevance of their credentials which far, far more important both for them and for NZ

Krazykiwi. I agree. And I am all for improving the pass rates of Maori (and non-Maori) tertiary students, and the quality of the courses they undertake. But point I was making is that simply saying we need more Maori in tertiary education, is not the case.

DPF – Quite so. Our education system has a finite capacity. The best results will be realised when those most committed to achieving results are admitted. So admitting students on the basis of any other characteristic (ethnicity, private funding etc) has the effect of limiting access to the most ambitious. I should add that ambition and desire to ‘do stuff’ with ones life aren’t exclusive attributes of grads. I left our college and drove a truck… before founding a few businesses

More than 200 tertiary providers will meet in Auckland today to find ways of getting more Maori students into tertiary education.

Judging by the rest of the article I think it’s referring to the 18-24 year age bracket – in which Maori participation rates are still comparatively lower and also the fact that Maori have a much lower participation rates in Bachelor and higher degree courses.

However, much of the increase in Māori participation has been in sub-degree level courses. In 2008, the Māori participation rate in level 1 to 3 certificate courses (9 per cent) was nearly double that of other ethnic groups. The number of Māori moving from school to degree-level study is increasing; however, participation rates for Māori aged 18 to 19 in degree-level study remain at less than half the rate for all students.

I know our local Iwi trust offer scholarships for tertiary education, my sons have been offered them to use if they so wish. My wife and myself have refused such help, we don’t wish to be beholding to any group, it favors certain “outcomes”. If the kids want to further their education they can do it off their own backs with our help.

Looking at the article, I think this was a somewhat mischevious post. The article headline is about tripling the number of Maori getting degrees. The line about more Maori in tertiary education doesn’t seem to be borne out by the remainder of the article. So the issue is achievement rather than participation.

As to the number in tertiary education the rise in Maori participation seems to correlate to the rise in certificate level courses
A break down of certificate level courses would give a better understanding of their potential value

The will be numerous factors contributing to this though studies do show that Maori students involved in mentoring programmes are more likely to finish their course than Maori students who don’t (at the same institution). So it’s evident that investing in these types of support strategies improves the retention and completion rates of Maori students in tertiary education.

ON September 2nd 2010 I wrote a mischievous column (“Declining by degree”) likening America’s universities to its car companies in about 1950: on top of the world and about to take an almighty fall. Since then I have heard the argument dismissed and denounced by the presidents of Harvard, Princeton and New York University. John Sexton, NYU’s affable president, even likened me to a member of the tea party, for which there is no more damning condemnation in academic circles.

So I am particularly delighted to read Peter Thiel’s latest thoughts on the higher-education bubble. Mr Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a legendary investor, has a long history of identifying bubbles. He insisted on striking a deal, against everybody’s advice, when the market valued PayPal at “only” $500m, on the ground that the dotcom bubble was about to burst (this was March 2000). He refused to buy property until recently, figuring that the dotcom bubble had simply shifted to housing.

Mr Thiel believes that higher education fills all the criteria for a bubble: tuition costs are too high, debt loads are too onerous, and there is mounting evidence that the rewards are over-rated. Add to this the fact that politicians are doing everything they can to expand the supply of higher education (reasoning that the “jobs of the future” require college degrees), much as they did everything that they could to expand the supply of “affordable” housing, and it is hard to see how we can escape disaster.

Here is Sarah Lacy’s summary of Mr Thiel’s argument about the safety-blanket role of higher education:

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.”

Mr Thiel’s own solution to the problem befits a man with money and a mission: he is offering 20 students $100,000 scholarships, over two years, to leave school and start a company rather than enter college.

As DPF knows, his figures include wananga and other sub-degree courses. Let’s look at participation rates for degrees instead. Here they are, from the same resource used by DPF, for: Asian; Europeans; Maori; Pasifika respectively.

These figures show that Maori (the third column) have just 80% of the participation rate for Bachelors degrees and Master degrees, and 50% of the rate for doctorates. For Pasifika participation is 85%, 48% and 36% of the European rate.

To quote John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? “

Opens next year with 400 Maori students. Huge construction site currently.

Maori will be bussed from far parts to attend. Will be interesting to see in time the number of ‘apartheid” educated children get to “real” university from there. No doubt education figures will be fudged.

Milky, if a school only accepts students based on their ethnicity then it’s an apartheid system. No different from having two bridges, one for whites and one for everyone else which we thankfully all regard as absurd and demeaning. So why the inconsistency?

1. Get them through primary school able to read and write fluently and do arithmetic.

2. Get them through high school reasonably numerate and able to write a reasonably sound essay.

In other words, if schools stuck to their educational knitting and actually made sure kids who attended could do the basics, they’d have no trouble getting into tertiary education, including quality tertiary education.

Parents can play their part by insisting their schools toe the line. Write to the board members, the education review office, minister of education, newspapers and bitch if it’s not being done.